


Catiline

by ghostburr



Category: Amrev - Fandom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-06
Updated: 2016-03-06
Packaged: 2018-05-25 02:48:49
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,987
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6177181
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghostburr/pseuds/ghostburr





	Catiline

 

Alexander’s hand shook as he scanned the yellowing page, finger tracing every word as if it were naked skin in the moonlight. He already knew how the night would end.

_For what is there, O Catiline, that can now afford you any pleasure in this city? For there is no one in it, except that band of profligate conspirators of yours, who does not fear you,—no one who does not hate you._

That was his idea, Alexander assured himself. To seduce, body and mind, every young man who showed as much as an inkling of promise, into his fold. The general leaned back in his chair, raised his legs up onto a seat opposite him, and breathed in. For a moment, he allowed himself a brief gaze into the fire.

This wasn’t going as planned. He rubbed his eyes and let his own hand wander down his torso.

_What brand of domestic baseness is not stamped upon your life? What disgraceful circumstance is wanting to your infamy in your private affairs?_

There was a masquerade party, a few years previous, Alexander’s mind traveled wildly, where he’d seen his Catiline disappear into a small room with a nameless someone and the general sighed longingly at such audacity.

_From what licentiousness have your eyes, from what atrocity have your hands, from what iniquity has your whole body ever abstained?_

Cicero wrote these words as a warning, his mind screamed out, a caution against men who would use their profligacy to overthrow republics. Alexander clenched his fist, grabbing a handful of loose fabric, and gritted his teeth. The fire before him crackled and popped and he wished he’d brought a different book with him on his lonely stay in the city.

_Is there one youth, when you have once entangled him in the temptations of your corruption, to whom you have not held out a sword for audacious crime, or a torch for licentious wickedness?_

The single man, sitting alone at his desk, hadn’t realized how warm the room had grown, even in the dead of winter. He reached up to his neck and loosened the thin white cravat and tossed it to the floor. Alexander closed his eyes again and tried to concentrate, tried not to think about a man so patently lascivious he would drive another to sin, but could not shake the image from his mind. The ticking of a clock in a nearby hallway shook him from his dangerous reverie and he ran a hand through his disheveled hair.

Oftentimes, Alexander spoke to himself, and didn’t know if it was from loneliness or passion.

“Do not let this Devil gain a foothold,” he muttered, closing the book briefly and placing a finger inside of it to mark his place. He rested his chin on his free hand and inhaled deeply again, trying to calm himself. Nervously, his foot began to twitch. And then, again, his mind traveled back to Cicero and his breathtakingly prophetic words. The general let out a small, mirthless chuckle.

“Do I believe you, Cicero? Or do I throw centuries’ worth of wisdom away because of my own human weakness?” At the last syllable, he tossed the book aside and stood up, covering his face. “Weak human. Weak, weak human.”

The general paced the room slowly, looked out the window at the night sky, and wondered briefly why he’d chosen to stay up so late, why he’d chosen this particular book to read, why Providence had chosen _that_ particular set of black eyes to haunt both his dreams and his nightmares. Why Cicero spoke with such truthful conviction and why he, Alexander, was suddenly short of breath.

At the sound of the chimes, signaling one a.m., Alexander walked cautiously back over to the table and picked up the dejected book, noticing with some chagrin it had landed, facedown, on the exact page he’d marked with his finger. His eyes picked up where he’d left off, his back to the roaring fire.

_For what is there, O Catiline, that you can still expect, if night is not able to veil your nefarious meetings in darkness, and if private houses cannot conceal the voice of your conspiracy within their walls—if everything is seen and displayed?_

At this, the Nevisian laughed aloud, body fluctuating between desire and amusement. Absentmindedly he sat down again and bit his bottom lip. He raised a finger and mimicked the gestures of an orator: “’For what is there, O Catiline, that you can still expect, if night is not able to veil your nefarious meetings in darkness?’ That is one for the ages, isn’t it, Mr Hamilton? You’d like that quite well, wouldn’t you?”

Alexander spoke to himself in perfect tones, convinced as he was that there was no one around him. He tried, desperately, to imagine someone, _anyone_ else, conducting a midnight meeting and could see no alternative.

 _“You’re_ conducting a midnight meeting, you know,” Alexander spoke up again, eyes scanning the pages. “But you’re not _him.”_

The lines blurred; the Nevisian was tired.

_Change your mind: trust me: forget the slaughter and conflagration you are meditating._

Another smile flared across the pointed face. Hadn’t he asked Catiline to join him? Hadn’t he warned him that his was the path of sin and destruction and he would be ruined, in the end? Alexander’s breath grew short again and he found his hand, his writing hand, which had a mind of its own, wandering across that small stretch of thigh.

In his mind he still heard that whisper, as well. _Come with me._

His physical body spoke for him. No sooner had he sat down again when he began to feel himself grow hot, anxious, furious with this long-dead Roman for writing words that spun scenarios in his mind like spider webs.

_What prisoner, what gladiator, what thief…_

The general tilted his head back, refused to look at the words for a moment—he could recite these words to and fro, up and down, in his sleep with the blankets disheveled around his waist—and furrowed his brows in thought.

_…what assassin, what parricide, what forger of wills, what cheat, what debauchee…_

All manner of sins flooded his mind. His mouth hung slightly ajar, silently begging for someone to wake him up from the cycle of never-ending passions that gripped him day after day. And, lately, night after night.

_…what spendthrift, what adulterer, what abandoned woman, what corrupter of youth, what profligate…_

Those were the words that always hit him, in his stomach, made it quiver with a dirty kind of excitement he’d never admit to in the daylight.

Head still tilted, Alexander laughed darkly. “Midnight meetings of the mind and body, of course. Of course.” He opened his eyes and stared at the ceiling; crossing the threshold of subconscious thought.

“Profligate…” he murmured. That had always been his favorite charge.

_…what scoundrel can be found in all Italy, who does not avow that he has been on terms of intimacy with Catiline?_

_“Christ…”_ Alexander breathed, the warm feeling spreading from his fingertips at the curve of his thigh to his abdomen, making his stomach flip in a way that held him entirely accountable for every thought he’d ever had. He wasn’t praying, at least not to a god that anyone existing in a realm outside his own mind would recognize, and he felt his chest heave with thick, labored breaths until he hated himself.  

Somewhere, a small voice corrected him: the was not what the Great Orator had intended. And yet in its very subversiveness teased him mercilessly and he shifted in his seat, longing to be somewhere else. Somewhere warmer. Perhaps hell.

“This _is_ hell.” Alexander grabbed himself, delicately at first, bemoaning the carnal instinct that was ultimately in control of himself and all humans, and bit his lip again to keep from crying out.

“This _is_ hell. I am in hell.”

_What murder has been committed for years without him? What nefarious act of infamy that has not been done by him?_

His eyelids fluttered, mouth agape. There was a murder taking place in his mind and, more especially, throughout his entire body, and he could feel it swell painfully and wished for the damnable deed to be finished with. Wished and wished and wished for something to happen when all he could focus on was the tightness in his pants. Wished for the act of lascivious infamy to fucking kill him already.

Alexander squeezed his eyes so tightly he felt them water.

 _“I can recite this with you,”_ another voice presented itself inside his mind. Mellow, like a storm cloud, or a shark swimming some distance off. Alexander grabbed himself tighter. _“Would you like me to recite this with you?”_

“Please.”

 _“How will you face yourself in the morning, Alexander?”_ The mellow voice teased him and suddenly the general was pressed against a wall somewhere indescribable, the warmth ebbing and flowing all over his body like a wave. _“How will you look me in the eyes when we meet again?”_

“Say my name again.”

 _“Fear is an incredible emotion, Alexander,”_ the voice soothed, _“it is what we most fear that we most desire, above all. Human nature is domination.”_

The Nevisian liked those words, and liked to hear their insinuations. He knew how this night would end.

_“For if we turn pain into pleasure, then we have conquered ourselves. Do you like that, Alexander?”_

Slowly he slid his own hand into the waistband of his pants and felt himself, rubbing and gripping himself mercilessly, the mellow voice’s small, gentle laugh somewhere in the back of his mind:

_But in what other man were there ever so many allurements for youth as in him, who both indulged in infamous love for others, and encouraged their infamous affections for himself…_

Alexander felt a moan rise up in his throat and bit his lip for a third time, betraying himself as he tasted blood.

“Please keep speaking–”

 _“– promising to some enjoyment of their lust…”_ It was the mellow voice, now, who whispered on and on, and Alexander knew exactly to whom it belonged, and knew exactly whose mouth should be, at this moment, wrapped around his cock, in between murmurings of desire and domination .

 _“…and not only instigating them to iniquity… “_ The general grabbed the side of the table to steady himself, coming undone too quickly, too quickly and too passionately, at the thought of the midnight conspirator pushing his face into a pillow to muffle his ecstasy.

_“…but even assisting them in it.”_

Alexander saw flashes of the exact type of assistance he’d like at that moment and pretended for a fleeting second that he was not alone in a cold city reading dead men’s words but rather wrapped in the embrace of a man who showed no emotion in the daylight. Imagined his writhing body betraying his all-encompassing lust. Firmly believing that, on occasion, his Catilinian torturer thought the same.

After minutes’ worth of desperate pleas, he cried out, coming hard, face flushed and eyes closed, screaming _that_ name into the stifled, hot air.

He swore loudly and wanted to sob at the cruelty of it all, raised his free hand to his mouth and bit the back of his fist as he came down.

Reality slowly settled in around him. Very slowly. Reluctantly, almost.

For a moment he sat with his head still tilted back, eyes closed, letting the thoughts wash over him like the warm liquid now covering his hand. With his other, he rubbed his features together and breathed rapidly, as if he’d just run a race.

As he’d done numerous times before, he gritted his teeth, grabbed the thin white neck-tie, and wiped himself off, thinking up some excuse. Viciously he slammed the book shut and slid it off the table, watching it hit the floor dangerously close to the fire.


End file.
